Our country (Japan) has experienced an ageing society with the improvements of living standard, hygienic environment, medical level, and the like based on the high economic growth after the World War II, and more specifically the society's aging rate, which is the proportion of a society's population that is comprised of persons aged 65 or older among the total population, is over 21%, that is, now Japan is experiencing the super-ageing society. Among the total population of about 127.65 million, about 25.56 million are people aged 65 or older in 2005; on the other hand, in 2020, the number is expected to increase to about 34.56 million among the total population of about 124.11 million. In such an ageing society, people who require nursing or care because of the disease, injury, old age, or the like (people who require nursing, etc.) are expected to increase more than people who require nursing, etc. that would appear in the ordinary, no-ageing society. In addition, our country has suffered from the declining birth rate: for example, the total fertility rate in 2013 is as low as 1.43. This has recently resulted in situations that an elderly person who requires nursing, etc. is taken care of by an elderly member of his family (spouse, child, or sibling).
People who require nursing, etc. live in the hospital, the welfare facility for the elderly, or other facilities (in the Japanese law, such facilities are called the short-term in-patient facility for the elderly, the nursing home for the elderly, or the intensive care home for the elderly) where they live while they are nursed or taken care of. In those facilities, it may happen that the person who requires nursing, etc. hurts because of falling from the bed or falling on the ground while he is walking, or he sneaks out of the bed and walks around. Such situations need to be handled as quickly as possible. If these situations are left unresolved, more serious problems may occur. Therefore, in those facilities, nurses, caregivers, and other staff patrol on the regular basis to confirm safety states of people who require care.
However, people who require nursing, etc. have increased more than nurses, etc. and the nursing industry and the caregiving industry have chronically suffered from a shortage of workers. Moreover, fewer nurses, caregivers, and other staff work in the evening and the nighttime than in the daytime. Therefore, in the evening and the nighttime, the workload per person increases and the reduction of workload has been requested. The problem of the lack of young people who take care of elderlies as described above also occurs in the facilities, and sometimes old nurses, etc. take care of the elderlies. As getting older, we lose our power and even if we are healthy, we feel more burdened than young nurses and caregivers do, and we tend to need time to make a move or decision.
To deal with such a lack of workers and reduce the burden on the nurses and the caregivers, the technique to support the nursing work and the caring work has been demanded. In view of this, in recent years, the technique for monitoring a monitored person as a monitoring target to be monitored such as a person who requires nursing, etc. has been researched and developed.
One of the techniques made in view of the above is the nurse call system disclosed in Patent Literature 1. The nurse call system according to this Patent Literature 1 includes a calling slave device installed at a bed for a patient to call a nurse, and a calling master device installed at a nurse station for a nurse to respond to the calling from the calling slave device. This system includes a camera for taking a picture of the patient on the bed from above the bed, and a state determining means that determines the occurrence of at least one of a state in which the patient has sat up in bed and a state in which the patient has left the bed on the basis of the footage of the camera, and outputs an attentional state occurrence signal. The calling master device includes a notifying means that performs a notification operation upon accepting the attentional state occurrence signal.
On the other hand, from the aspect of the confirmation of safety, people who live alone are also the persons to be monitored just like people who require care as described above.
Incidentally, the monitored-person monitoring system monitors a plurality of monitored persons and therefore, a display device that displays the monitoring information on the monitored persons may need to display a plurality of pieces of monitoring information. In such a case, for example, when the display device displays a plurality of pieces of monitoring information on the display screen, too many pieces of information are displayed and it becomes difficult for a monitoring person to determine how to take action in accordance with the monitoring information.